Preface

The closure of the Espace Eiffel Branly, a venue already sadly missed by some, has led to a very pernicious splintering of the Parisian artists' Salons. The larger number of them were relegated, by our tutelary Ministry, to the Porte d'Auteuil, in another Espace, quite pleasant in itself, but too rarely visited and where the rental rates are outrageous, even though we are told that this is the norm today. This entails incredibly complicated financial juggling for our Salons, skirting catastrophes, which might eventually lead, quite simply to the disappearance of some of them. The Salon Jeune Création, for its part, was sent to La Villette, on a poor exhibition date. In any event, since the changes, the amount of visitors has steadily fallen.

Grands et Jeunes d'Aujourd'hui is being sent to the center of Paris, in the prestigious Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts (ENSBA, in short). They tell us that it is the first time that an artists' Salon has taken over these prestigious premises, since its inception. Well done ! But we are short of space in the two rooms, which some must envy us nonetheless. We therefore lose half our exhibitors : instead of over four hundred artists, each one with a large scale work, we cannot exhibit even half of them. And each one will have to drastically reduce his presentation, by scaling it down to a mandatory format, which is much too small, as much for the painters as for the sculptors.

The number of national Delegations, one of our main specifics, has been limited to five, with only eight artists each, instead of the usual twenty. Neither the impact nor the prestige will be the same, be it for the artists nor for the visitors, nor for the increasing internationalisation of the Salon. Everyone knows how important these Delegations are, which we were the first to set up. This idea has frequently been reproduced since then which only goes to show its interest.

Let us hope, once more, that the Salons will survive, but for how long ? The situation has never been so precarious for the majority of our Associations, and this, we must point out, despite repeated efforts made by the Ministry of Culture, case by case. Will the tens of thousands of artists involved, great or young, living in France or throughout the world, have to stop showing in Paris ?…

And so, the best intentioned lose heart. Patronage is on the decline. We must be very careful not to let these basic links for transmitting living art disappear. While continuing to ignore the endless contempt of those many artists, nowadays institutionalised (therefore famous !), who were so happy in the beginning to be given a show on our walls, which have always remained open to quality and pluralism.


Patrick-Gilles Persin
President,
and
President of the
Artists' Salon Federation